PhD Student Paty Abril-Gonzalez Holt took first place at the campus-wide Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition hosted by the Graduate School in February. As the first-place winner for her talk, "Latinx Bilingual Students’ Voices Matter: Transforming Education with Love," she will receive $1,500 in research funds, and Abril-Gonzalez Holt will represent CU Boulder at the Western Association of Graduate Schools competition on March 21 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
3MT, founded by the University of Queensland in 2008, is an academic competition that cultivates students’ presentation and research communication skills, and challenges presenters to describe their research within three minutes to a general audience. Competitors are allowed one PowerPoint slide but no other resources or props.
From an open solicitation to participate in CU Boulder's inaugural 3MT, the Graduate School received interest from 24 competitors, all of whom had the opportunity to work with writing, improv and peer review specialists to improved their presentations and slides before finalists were invited to present before a live audience and panel of judges on Feb. 20. Judges for the CU Boulder competition included Russ Moore, provost and executive vice chancellor for Academic Affairs; Marcia Yonemoto, professor of history and director of the CU Graduate Teacher Program; Jim Williams, retired dean of the CU libraries; and, Marty Coffin Evans, president of the Boulder Rotary Club. Bud Coleman, theater professor and CU in D.C. director, was the master of ceremonies.